Evernote: Best app to take and organize notes on your iPad

"Evernote is hands down the best way to take and organize notes on the iPad whether you're in class, in a meeting, or on the go. Pair that with the ability to use Evernote across any platform available and it simply can't be beat."

Taking notes on the iPad is a great way to save on the amount of physical paper you have floating around and a much easier way to stay organized. There's so many note taking apps in the App Store that choosing one can be a bigger task than anything. Syncing notes across all your devices and organizing them has never been easier when you use Evernote for iPad. If you prefer typing out your notes instead of using a handwritten notes app, Evernote is the best choice.

Whether you need to take freeform notes, create checklists, or upload pictures - Evernote's got you covered. The best part about Evernote is that they've got a client for pretty much any platform you'll be using. I frequently take notes on my iPad in meetings or during consults. When I get back to my office they're already synchronized and available on my iMac. From there I can share them via e-mail, Twitter, or Facebook or send them directly to my printer. If you've ever had to take minutes for a meeting it's never been easier to send notes out to all attendants before you even leave the meeting.

Upon starting a new note in Evernote you'll notice that you've got the option to add them to notebooks and add tags to notes. This makes searching and sorting less of a task and super simple. I've got several types of clients from consulting to web design. I simply tag the note appropriately in my work notebook and I can find their notes in just a few taps from anywhere inside Evernote.

I've also found Evernote to be a great place to store information such as serial numbers or photos when price shopping. Just take a quick photo inside a new note and tag it however you'd like. I love doing this when shopping for electronics or other items that I want to check prices for at multiple places. It allows me to easily compare prices without hand typing information that's already on the price tag.

While Evernote is free to use you are limited as to how much storage you can use in one month. A free account gives you 60MB a month worth of storage. It'll reset every month back to zero. If you plan on taking more text notes than anything a free account will suit you just fine and you'll most likely never come close to hitting that cap, unless you're a note taking maniac. If you plan on saving a lot of images or screen caps to Evernote, you can probably come close to that cap and may want to consider upgrading.

For $5.00/month or $45/year you'll get 1GB of storage upload space per month as well as many other premium features including the following -

Offline access

No ads

Extensive note history that allows you to view past versions of your notes (good if you're collaborating with others)

I personally have always used the free version of Evernote and I've never hit the cap. 60MB may not seem like a lot of space but if you're only snapping a few pictures here and there and most of what you'll be doing involves taking text notes, a free account will serve you great. While the free version is ad-supported, you'll only really see ads on the PC or Mac version of the client and they're tucked away in a corner and extremely unobtrusive.

The good

Great user interface across all platforms that's familiar when you jump from one device to another

A free account will be sufficient for many users

Fast syntonization across all your devices for easy access to your notes from anywhere

Multiple notebooks and tags make organizing your notes super simple

The bad

No way to passcode protect your notes unless you pay for Premium which is a bit of a let down

Conclusion

Evernote is hands down the best way to take and organize notes on the iPad whether you're in class, in a meeting, or on the go. Pair that with the ability to use Evernote across any platform available and it simply can't be beat. Whether you use an iPad and an iPhone or an iPad and an Android or BlackBerry, Evernote has you covered.

What are your favorite note taking apps for your iPad? Is Evernote your favorite or do you think something else deserves the title title for best iPad app for note taking?

Reader comments

Evernote: Best app to take and organize notes on your iPad

Since i don't take a ton of notes all the note taking apps perplex me. Honestly, the basic note taking apps that come with the device are all i want. I've tried many and they are totally overcomplicated for my needs. FYI i do have evernote and i like it. I just don't use it all that often. Evernote was one of the first apps i got for the palm pre so i still have it. but i can just as easily write most of the same stuff in the note app and pull it up at will. And i got the rest of my docs in sugar sync and skydrive. Like i tried a bunch of note apps and shopping list apps and realized i spent more time using the app formating the entry then i did just writing down the info in the basic note apps.
Eitherway it's a nice app with and has a pretty nice interface.

I didn't see the point of evernote before, until I got a lot of screens (2 phones, a tablet, and a laptop). evernote became the backend godsend for syncing all of them (notes, images, voice memo, pdf, emails straight to evernote).
evernote as a web service is a hundred times more useful than just the app/client.

I have Evernote - still trying to see how I can integrate it in my day-to-day seamlessly. For me, Notability has the features and intuitive setup/use that suits my needs, be it school or work. (though for official work it's still sometimes quicker/easier for me to just grap a pen and pad)
Can't argue with the features and accessibility of Evernote, though... there's just something about the setup that makes it awkward for me to use.
Good writeup.

Typing notes on the iPad seems slow and cumbersome when one is trying to keep up with a talking professor. Also I remember frequently needing to create freehand drawings on the fly. I, too, and unsure why Evernote would be the best choice for taking notes in almost any situation. The automatic syncing it does sound nice though.

I see people gushing over Evernote everywhere, but I just don't get it. Springpad has all the features of Evernote but is free (including offline access).
But I mainly use it to get notes from my PC to my iPad, not the other way around. For taking notes on my iPad I much prefer a handwriting app such as Note Taker HD.

That is incorrect. Springpad can be used offline, which (as I pointed out) is one reason I prefer it over Evernote. As Ms. Kazmucha points out in her post, Evernote has offline support but you have to pay for it.

Thank you for your comment Tim, I think that Springpad is a well desinged service, but the barrier to entry for mundane tasks it a little too much for my liking and for general notes. For example: When you open the Springpad app on the iPhone the first thing you are taken to is a view of all of your notes, this now makes the main purpose of the app Making Notes take one more step to complete. Granted you can create simple tasks using the Springpad app and on your iPhone and this is one of the features I did find useful and wish that Evernote had. However one of the important things that I need in a note application is a way to get memories, ideas and thoughts out of my head so that I can stick to the GTD way of thinking and write them down.Another reason that Springpad does not work for me, (this could change in the future) is that it is not available on all of my devices and tools that I use. This greatly reduces my use for it. The ability to be useful and available every where that I am, is what makes Evernote so powerful and useful. Also since Evernote has an API it allows other people and companies to create great services that work with Evernote and to be more specialized on a specific area of notes, like the Egretlist, JotNot and FastEver apps on the iPhone. This makes it possible for Evernote to focus on the important things like stability, new features etc.I am not ruling out Springpad as a great app, I just think that Springpad and Evernote has two different goals and for taking notes when and where I am Evernote wins in my opinion.

I've been using Evernote for a while now and I love. Although I use it more to sync stuff from PC to Iphone and Ipad (Like a recipes i found on the net, or Photography tips, anything useful on the go). Snapping pictures works great for when I'm shopping and wanna compare prices.
I also use the Chrome browser extension and with it I can clip websites' url, whole page, images or selection.
works great I love. The Ipad version is use-friendly too.

I seem to remember my notes better when I write them over typing them, I use Noteshelf. Some others are better but I started the semester with it so I'm gonna finish with it. I might switch to another next semester.

I tried Evernote but I never liked it. I decided to go with Simplenote. I've been with them for about 2 years and I'm comfortable with it. It does one thing and does it very well. Notes that sync with iPhone, iPad, web. No bells, no whistles. And frankly, that's all I need.

I love Evernote, but I almost never open it to take notes or create new entries. What I mostly do is use the Chrome extension from my PC to add recipes and guitar tabs to my Evernote notebooks, and then use it to sync and read them across my devices.

After using evernote for a few months I needed to upgrade accounts because I was adding in so much content. But the truth is, once you use it as much as I do you almost feel guilty if you didnt pay them. Such a great service and the premium version is the best $45/yr investment I have made in a long time.

I'm trying to keep my cloud life less fragmented. I've started to pull away from services that don't either sync with iCloud or Dropbox. I really don't want my data spattered around multiple services all costing $20-$50 per year.
For me, I just use Pages with iCloud sync for note taking and a student edition of DropDav to get Pages into Dropbox if desired. It's Better, but still not as smooth as I'd like. Someday..

I used Evernote for all my notes until I ran into a situation when I needed them offline. Evernote's free version does NOT sync. That is a fail for my needs. I'm now moving everything to either Dropbox or iCloud.

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Is it too much to ask to give us a list view in the iPad app? Seriously, stacks are gimmicky and useless. What does a tiny preview of a typed note tell you? Nothing. You look at the name of the notebook under the useless preview.
I have a few dozen notebooks. I want a list view. Like the Mac app has.
Seriously.

When I turn the screen off on my ipohne and lock it, (not turn it off completely) it makes this weird high-pitched chirping noise, it's loud and it starts chirping really high and quickly and slowly starts to chirp deeper and slower. Then it will suddenly stop. It only lasts a few seconds and doesn't happen whn he iPhone is on vibrate, (duh)Why is it doing this and how can I get it to stop?Why is

I don't get all the Springpad love. It may be fine if all you want to do is collect recipes, but I need to be able to create, organise and edit long text notes on the go and the last time I looked Springpad didn't allow editing. You also can't delete or even move the stupid "Friend's Stuff", which takes up a prime location on the tiny iPhone screen. And unless you live in the US, many search functions, including the barcode scanner, are useless as they show mostly US results.
My one bugbear with Evernote is the ongoing issue with text formatting becoming corrupted if notes are edited on iOS or during sync between devices or platforms. It's beyond me why a note taking app can't sort out something so basic. Other than that, its functionality and compatibility with other apps is far superior to Springpad, Simple Note et al.

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I tried for months Evernote but at the end I really prefered Beesy a new app where I can organize my tasks for business purposes. good project management and it's not easy to find nowadays. http://www.beesapps.com/beesy-ipad-to-do/ im quite pleased with it